Dunhill Pipe Tobaccos: 1907-1990

Dunhill pipe tobaccos are a blend catalogue that grew from the shop Alfred Dunhill opened in 1907 on Duke Street in London's St James's district, first expanding and then contracting over eighty years. This entry covers the catalogue's course between 1907 and 1990. The individual characters of the blends, along with the brand's post-1990 period, are the subject of Dunhill Tobacco Blends; the pipes are covered in Dunhill (White Spot).

The Duke Street Counter and the "My Mixture" Ledger

In the shop's opening years the business was not selling ready-made tins but talking with each customer to build a bespoke recipe; the sign in the window read "Tobacco Specialist." Every recipe was given a number and entered into a ledger called "My Mixture." Records indicate that in the early years the leaf used in the blend came from George Dobie & Son in Paisley and a supplier called the Tobacco Supply Syndicate. The first crack in this arrangement appeared in the 1910 catalogue: ten "My Mixture" recipes were now listed openly for anyone, and nine of them carried the name of the customer for whom the recipe had first been prepared. 965, the longest-lived member of the series, had also been arranged for a single customer before 1910. The ledger tradition continued as the catalogue grew; it is said that by century's end more than thirty-six thousand recipes had accumulated in the Duke Street books.